You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Zoonotic diseases are infections that can be transmitted between people and animals. These infections are caused by microorganisms, such as viruses, bacteria, parasites, and fungi. Patients with zoonotic infections can experience severe and life-threatening illness, whilst others remain asymptomatic. For example, animals can harbor germs asymptomatically for long periods with no apparent impact on their own health. However, some microbes carried by animals can result in human illness, depending on the zoonotic disease. Furthermore, it is widely reported that almost 60% of human diseases are zoonotic, and at least 75% of the pathogens that cause diseases in humans are of zoonotic origin.
ANOXIA defines the lack of free molecular oxygen in an environment. In the presence of organic matter, anaerobic prokaryotes produce compounds such as free radicals, hydrogen sulfide, or methane that are typically toxic to aerobes. The concomitance of suppressed respiration and presence of toxic substances suggests these habitats are inhospitable to Eukaryota. Ecologists sometimes term such environments 'Death Zones'. This book presents, however, a collection of remarkable adaptations to anoxia, observed in Eukaryotes such as protists, animals, plants and fungi. Case studies provide evidence for controlled beneficial use of anoxia by, for example, modification of free radicals, use of alternative electron donors for anaerobic metabolic pathways, and employment of anaerobic symbionts. The complex, interwoven existence of oxic and anoxic conditions in space and time is also highlighted as is the idea that eukaryotic inhabitation of anoxic habitats was established early in Earth history.
"Hydrogenosomes and Mitosomes: Mitochondria of Anaerobic Eukaryotes" provides a summary of the current knowledge of these organelles which occur in unicellular, often parasitic organisms, including human pathogens. These organelles exhibit a variety of structures and functions. This work describes properties such as protein import, structure, metabolism, adaptation, proteome and their role in drug activation and resistance. Further topics include organelle evolution and biogenesis.
In this second of two new volumes covering mitochondria, methods developed to assess the number and function of nuclear-encoded proteins in the mitochondrion are presented. Chapters focus on the regulation of mitochondrial function and mitochondrial diseases, with a section emphasizing the mitochondrial defects associated with type 2 diabetes. The critically acclaimed laboratory standard for 40 years, Methods in Enzymology is one of the most highly respected publications in the field of biochemistry. With more than 450 volumes published, each volume presents material that is relevant in today's labs, truly an essential publication for researchers in all fields of life sciences. - New methods...
Multiple demographic or economic parameters contribute to the origin of emerging infections, for example: poverty, urbanization, climate change, conflicts and population migrations. All these factors are a challenge to assess the impact (present and future) of parasitic diseases on public health. The intestine is a major target of these infections; it is a nutrient-rich environment harbouring a complex and dynamic population of 100 trillion microbes: the microbiome. Most researches on the microbiome focus on bacteria, which share the gut ecosystem with a population of uni- and multi cellular eukaryotic organisms that may prey on them. Our interest focuses on the families of eukaryotic microb...
This volume covers the most important parasitic protists that are known to infect humans. The pathogens discussed cause diseases like toxoplasmosis, malaria, cryptosporidiosis, leishmaniasis, amoebiasis, trichomoniasis, and giardiasis. Readers from microbiology will appreciate the special focus on protist cell biology. As demonstrated in several of the chapters, these parasites are characterized by peculiar structures and organelles that cannot be found in mammalian cells – even though both are eukaryotic. The book employs light and electron microscopy to display the changing morphology in various stages of parasitic development. In turn, the results are supplemented by transcriptome and proteome profiles that help to describe how these changes take place on a molecular level. Both researchers and clinicians from tropical medicine will find essential and practically applicable background information on these increasingly important pathogens.
Trypanosoma cruzi is a pathogenic protozoan of the Trypanosomatidade Family, which is the etiological agent of Chagas’ disease. Chagas’ disease stands out for being endemic among countries in Latin America, affecting about 15 million people. Recently, Chagas has become remarkable in European countries as well due to cases of transmission via infected blood transfusion. An important factor that has exacerbated the epidemiological picture in Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela is infection after the oral intake of contaminated foods such as sugar cane, açai and bacaba juices. Trypanosoma cruzi is an intracellular protozoan that exhibits a complex life cycle, involving multiple developmental st...
Eukaryotic parasites (including parasitic protozoans, worms and arthropods) are more complex and heterogeneous organisms than pathogenic bacteria and viruses. This notion implies different evolutionary strategies of host exploitation. Typically, parasites establish long-term infections and induce relatively little mortality, as they often limit pathological changes by modulating host cells and downregulating adverse immune responses. Their pattern of distribution tends to be endemic rather than epidemic. Despite these seemingly benign traits, parasites usually cause substantial chronic morbidity, thus constituting an enormous socioeconomic burden in humans, particularly in resource poor coun...